Anyone tried Novatix Cyberhawk?

[Fraoch]

http://www.novatix.com/

Sounds good to me:

* Persistent zero-day threat protection made easy for everyone—even novice users!
* Protects against both known and zero-day viruses, worms, trojans, buffer overflows, rootkits and even some spyware.
* Perpetually ready for the next malware outbreak, with no signature updates required.
* Patent-pending ActiveDefense technology intelligently scans and analyzes computer processes to detect and block any malicious activity—without false positives!
* Works alongside your current security programs—there is no need to uninstall your antivirus, anti-spyware, firewall or other security program before installing Cyberhawk.
* Runs in background without impacting system performance.
* Highest level of out-of-the-box accuracy. No need to configure baffling, technical security settings: just turn Cyberhawk on and start blocking malware.
* Always up-to-date thanks to the input provided by the online Cyberhawk Secure Community, a worldwide network of users who supply feedback on emerging threats and evolving malware.

And it's free.

It's intended to compliment firewall, antispyware and AV, and I like the idea: a proactive rather than a reactive solution. Reactive solutions are falling behind the pace of malware development - these guys are getting so sophisticated they can do a lot of damage before a reactive solution can find them. And even trying to find them may not work - apparently many AV packages are very poor at finding malware.

So am I going to be the guinea pig? I'd rather not, and the software is at version 1.0 as of July 19th...Plus I always wonder when you see something like this that's appeared out of nowhere - what's to stop this from being spyware?

[Fraoch]

OK, I'm the guinea pig.

So far I like it. Fairly low on resources (uses about 15 MB of memory), doesn't tax the CPU, fast, doesn't pop up constant advisory boxes.

[Tinker]

Yep me too. I loaded it up and we shall see and report anything strange..

[rjs735]

I'll be interested in what you have to say. I went to their web site and they appear to be a brand new product.

Their support pages consists of their FAqs.

All the stuff Fraoch posted is interesting to anyone with an eye on security.

Keeps us posted guys. Oh and yeah thanks for being the guinea pigs.

[Fraoch]

No problems so far.

A little more information would be nice. They wanted to keep it simple but IMHO it's a little too simple.

The only time it went off was when I executed a program that wanted to run itself at start-up. It told me the program was doing this, that certain malware did this, was this a legitimate program and did I want to allow this? This is good.

It's saying it analyzed 10 314 events so far, 25 "programs protected" and 1 suspicious activity detected.

[Kage]

It really doesn't like Windows XP x86-64...

[wallijonn]

Fraoch,

Does it work within a Restricted account? (I would think that if you install it via the Administrator account, logged off, logged into a Restricted account, that it would work okay, but will you need Admin rights to have it write to a log file, for instance?)

[rjs735]

Fraoch Have you looked at Winpatrol. What you just posted sounds an lot like one of the things winpatrol does.

Here's the link to it. http://www.winpatrol.com/

I have been using it for a couple of years. It tell me if any program tries to change the default browser page even if it's MS to update IE.

It tells me when a program wants to start on the next boot. It tells me if any programs have modified ( for 98 win.ini or any other system control file bat, sys).

[Fraoch]

Originally Posted by wallijonn

Fraoch,

Does it work within a Restricted account? (I would think that if you install it via the Administrator account, logged off, logged into a Restricted account, that it would work okay, but will you need Admin rights to have it write to a log file, for instance?)

I don't know. I'm bad, I do everything in an Administrator account.

This is why I like security applications so much.

[Tinker]

Cyberhawk is not playing well with my system. It keeps locking up the task bar and a short time later the entire system and I have to do a reset to recover. I also can not remove Cyberhawk without locking up the puter.

I have Winpatrol loaded now and we will see what it does. Thanks rjs735 for the link and info.

[Fraoch]

I'm not sure if I want to keep using it as I have programs that do what it's doing for me already.

Today it did something that I don't have already though - I updated my HOSTS file and it alerted on it. I don't have real-time HOSTS file protection although Spybot can detect when it's changed - after it's changed.

So I may keep using it for a while.

[wallijonn]

Originally Posted by Fraoch

I do everything in an Administrator account.

tsk. tsk. tsk.

It seems to work okay when using WXP's Limited account. So far. But... there is still the problem of trying to decipher what it is that is being warned about, just like most firewalls.

Cyberhawk seems to work okay with my Kerio firewall. I don't know if it would play nice with AOL's firewall or Norton's Internet Security Suite firewall.

[Gorganzola]

http://www.prevx1.com

[pvong]

sounds cool

[Fraoch]

I'm not sure I'll stick with Novatix Cyberhawk. It's not really telling me anything I don't know already - I have two programs that detect when other programs try to run on startup, and I believe one of those programs (Spybot TeaTimer) didn't tell me about the HOSTS file thing because I already told it to ignore it.

Prevx1 looks good at first glance except the following:

How Much Does Prevx1 Cost?

We believe that if your PC is never infected then Prevx1 should not cost you a thing. It should be completely free. And so it is.

You can use Prevx1 completely free of charge to monitor your PC for infection. We will even defend and clean up your PC for free for up to 28 days following your first infection. Thereafter, you can choose to pay as you go or to buy a years full protection and clean up for less than $25.

Sounds like ransomware to me. You get one shot to protect your PC (and help out their detection algorithm in the process!), then you owe them money if you want to continue. No thanks. What if it's a false alarm? Novatix Cyberhawk has gone off 11 times for me, all false alarms.